The Not So Masked Man
by Leesa Perrie
Summary: AU a what if story. What if Rodney isn't what he seems...or is. NOT CHARACTER FRIENDLY!


**The Not So Masked Man**

**By Leesa Perrie**

_This should be considered AU, as I don't really believe Rodney is like this. Set early Season 3_

_**WARNING: Not character friendly**. _

_For the Masks and Masquerade Challenge on sgaflashfic on live journal_

Everybody here wears masks.

Elizabeth, the cool and caring leader, is really a manipulative woman who uses her skills to get what she wants. Of course, what she wants is generally good for Atlantis and its people, and maybe she does care in some ways, but in the end, she will use all her diplomatic skills to get what she wants. I hate being manipulated, but I allow it. Because she may not be what she seems, but she is the leader of this expedition, and if I want to stay here I need to stay in her good books. So I let her think she is 'managing' me, let her take pride in 'taming' the beast that is me, the arrogant McKay.

Sheppard's mask covers another one who manipulates what he wants. Uses friendship as a bait, a reward for falling into line with him. He thinks I actually care about him being my friend, being part of the team, with all the trust and loyalty that means. Thinks it's what I want, and uses it to control me in the field. But only because I let him. And only then because it is easier than handling the dangerous man I know lurks beneath. I don't want or need friendships or team-mates, but I do want to be out in the field, first to claim any new technology we find. To be lauded a hero when I find the ZedPMs we need. So I let him think his friendship is important to me.

Teyla, her mask is not so obvious. But she is a negotiator who has to keep her calm, when all she wants is to strike out in anger. I know she has dreamed of killing me, maybe of killing us all. She wouldn't though, she needs us. Needs Atlantis, if there is to be any hope of freedom for her and her people. So she is polite and restrained, but inside she thinks we are fools, children playing in a galaxy more dangerous than we realise. Causing more bad than good, but remaining with us, in the hope that we can defeat the Wraith, and other assorted bad guys, despite our fumbling mistakes.

Ronon. He is one that perhaps is most true to himself, and yet…Sateda was clearly more advanced than most races in this galaxy. He may not understand our science, our technology, but his people weren't primitives. Seven years will have changed him, of course, but he must have been civilised to some degree, certainly more than he shows now. He plays the hard man, but beneath I suspect lurks a softer persona. One he hides, for fear of ridicule. He is wise to do so.

Carson is a sensitive and caring person. Yet he has caused more death and destruction than anyone else here…or at least, he has the potential to. He plays at scientist, experimenting with things better left alone. Worrying about how things turn out, but always after the fact, and he doesn't let it stop him from the course he has set. Ethical dilemmas, and yet he keeps on breaking his ethical code. Caring? Perhaps. Sensitive? Maybe. But there lurks a darker side, a side that scares me. So I take the time to stay on his good side. Pretending a friendship I do not feel.

And me. I wear the most complicated mask. They think that my arrogance, my thoughtless words, my abrasive personality hides a better side. An insecure person, who feels he is lacking and overcompensates. One who doubts himself, and uses his ego to cover it. They think I had a bad upbringing, and that my problems stem from that. No matter that Jeannie doesn't show the same signs of a dysfunctional family.

They are wrong. I am who I seem to be on the surface, the rest is my mask. Those who think I am arrogant and egotistical, who think I am petty and bad with people, who think I am loud and obnoxious, and do not see beneath what the people here believe is my mask, these are the people who really see me. The rest, they look beneath the surface image and see another me, but this other me is really my mask.

I let them think what they will. It serves my purposes. Makes them believe I am not so self-centred or bad. I created the masks beneath my not-mask long ago, so that some would think better of me, so that then I could exploit them. Use them to get whatever I want.

And what I want is to be the best scientist in the universe, and to be acknowledged as such. Atlantis will provide me with that, and the price I pay is to put up with these people with their masks, and let them use me almost as much as I am using them.

It is a price worth paying for the eternal fame I will have when the Stargate Programme becomes known to the public.

Something I am working on making happen, as soon as I am ready.

The End


End file.
